As state legislators toil over redesigning the congressional map, one rumor making the rounds is that U.S. Rep. Tim Holden's district could be redrawn to include Easton. Holden, a Democrat and the longest serving Pennsylvania congressman, called it a "twist."

"I didn't hear anything about Easton until yesterday. I looked at the map, there's ways of making it contiguous, it would be an odd shaped district ...," Holden said on Capitol Hill Friday. "I was told for months (Schuylkill County) would stretch from Harrisburg to Scranton, but this twist about Easton...The area to get from Harrisburg to Carbon to Monroe to Easton would have to be a windy, awkward looking district."

This weekend, our Harrisburg colleague John Micek wrote about some of the potential map configurations, while here in Washington we collected some reaction from those who'd be impacted.

Concrete details were scarce Friday, but one reality is inescapable: Because of changes in population, the state is losing one of its 19 seats on Capitol Hill. And that means Pennsylvania's political topography is changing.

"The words are 'consolidating gains,' " said Chris Borick, a political science professor at Muhlenberg College in Allentown. "[Republicans] are not looking for increased seats. They're looking for ways to hold on to what they've got."

Beyond that, all is conjecture for now.

"I was there 10 years ago and what people thought the map would end up being and what ended up in the bill [authorizing it] were different things," said U.S. Rep. Jim Gerlach, R-6th District, who was a state senator during the last redistricting fight in 2001. "Never believe initial reports."

Gerlach's current seat was created a decade ago in the last round of post-Census redistricting.

One area of interest is northeastern Pennsylvania, where mapmakers are looking to shore up the 11th District seat held by Republican U.S. Rep. Lou Barletta of Hazleton. A byproduct of that effort could also mean a safer 17th District seat for U.S. Rep. Tim Holden, a Democrat from St. Clair, Schuylkill County.

Under one scenario, the attempt to help Barletta means taking his district and stretching it south and west into such Republican-friendly turf as Lebanon and Dauphin counties. Barletta's current seat includes Columbia, Monroe and Carbon counties as well as Democratic-leaning Luzerne County.

Holden, in turn, could end up with what one observer described as a snake-like seat swapping part of Dauphin and Lebanon counties, which were added to the redrawn 17th District a decade ago, in exchange for Democrats in Berks, Schuylkill, Luzerne, Lackawanna and Monroe counties — and perhaps even Easton.

"I suspect my district will be pushed west, I just don't know how far," Republican U.S. Rep. Charlie Dent said Friday. "My goal in redistricting is to keep Lehigh and Northampton counties whole, or as whole as possible."

Dent's Lehigh Valley-based 15th District seat will stay mostly in the Valley, but could add some of northern Lebanon County and more of Berks County. Berks could eventually be split among four members of Congress.

Barletta won election in 2010, defeating Democrat Paul Kanjorski in the Republican wave that also returned control of the state House to the GOP and put onetime Attorney General Tom Corbett into the governor's office.

But with public approval of Congress at a historic low, Barletta is not automatically guaranteed re-election next year in his current seat, said Tom Baldino, a political science professor at Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre.

A reconfigured 11th District seat means Barletta would "have to introduce himself to new Republican voters," Baldino noted. And "while that is a bit of a problem, it's a better problem to have than staying in your current district and confronting Democratic voters who are not happy with him or the Republicans in Congress."

Barletta said Friday "my hope is that my district would be more fair and balanced than it is now. The only way they could possibly do that is to move me more west or south. I would believe my district could go either way."

Observers said the redrawn seat for Holden is an acknowledgment by Republican mapmakers that the former Schuylkill County sheriff has a virtual lock on the seat.

"I have to react to whatever cards are dealt," Holden said of the GOP-controlled process. A redrawn 17th District that includes Easton could work, he said, "but it would be an odd-shaped district."

In the Bucks County-based 8th District, GOP Congressman Mike Fitzpatrick would get a seat based almost entirely in Bucks County by shedding two fingers of land that extend into northeast Philadelphia and Montgomery County.